During August I painted on five new gessoed stretched linen striates. I used a technique that I explored earlier this Spring in one or two un-stretched linens. In the simplest terms, I might describe as a trance-like finger painting method. I may have used it when I first started painting ages 2-3. It is a fulfilling method as I noticed that I simultaneously feel spiritually, emotionally or energetically, and physically aware.
Having been inspired by especially the mark-making within paintings I saw last week at Baltimore Museum of Art's Joan Mitchell Retrospective, I tried to "keep" the most satisfying-to-me paint marks while working on mine today. Along with color, the energetic quality of marks, which I know is antithetical to "authorship" :), is a top painting priority...both in my own, as well as in those I study, look at, and enjoy. It is, both the containment of and/or the absence or lack of energetic or gestural marks, the signature of an artist/author.
Could it be argued, since the use of "signatures", which I believe dates to Middle Ages and involved the use of one's "unique" stamp if I have that right, that the replicability of one's "mark" was not necessarily ever very unique, but historically associated with reproduction. If so, is the 21st Century "Death of Author" Barthes argued for all that it has been cracked up to be?
I am looking at what I did today and thinking it is an ok start to this group of works...maybe these five, combined with the first Spring "test" will morph into what I have been calling the "Color Coded" series...or maybe they will become a separate, related by color subset.
One thing I kept coming back to in them, which I also did in the first passes or layers of the "Color Coded" paintings was continuously attempt to mix directly onto the surface/s my skin-tones. Overall, at the moment, these are far too pink or too red to match my skin, so I will likely return to them...trying again. When I do, regarding the paint application, I may stick to the method I used today, or I may return to using brushes.
